“The global pandemic we are currently fighting has created an economic crisis that may take years to fully recover from. With record-high unemployment and so many families struggling, we need to make major investments to our small businesses and workforce development in order to expand job opportunities and grow our local economies.”

In July 2020 Brendan was proud to support the Senate Economic Development bill that authorizes $455 million to help bolster Massachusetts’s economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes provisions related to small businesses, local economic development projects, vocational schools and community colleges, clean energy, restaurants, the tourism industry, infrastructure investments, and housing reform. It also contains a student loan borrower bill of rights that creates protections for students here in the Commonwealth who are saddled with student debt. This bill is currently being negotiated in Conference Committee during the extended legislative session.

While he has supported many state-wide economic initiatives, Brendan is always focused on directly helping people in his district. For the past three state budgets, Brendan has secured funding for the E-Team Machinist program in Lynn that has trained workers and connected them to good paying jobs.

Brendan is proud to serve on the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies as Vice Chair. In this role he worked with his colleagues to pass an economic development bill that included funding for the Workforce Skills Capital Grants program. Since that time, Lynn Vocational and Technical Institute has been awarded over $700,000 to upgrade its machinist program and provide capital improvements for a new HVAC program.